AuthorTopic: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game  (Read 13099 times)

Offline zez

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WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

on: March 28, 2010, 05:28:11 am


So, first off, sorry about the terrible quality on the gif, Its more to show the thing in motion then anything, but its pretty ugly (and kind of ridicules, seeing as the thing is only 3 colors...)
Basically, Im happy with the overall form of the sprite, and it looks fine when its just standing around (the first 4 frames on the png) and Im mostly happy with the animation. It does conveys the overall feeling I was going for (basically, imagine a ninja frolicking through a field of daises, and you have about the mood.) Its obviously not done, I basically just made a three frame stick figure run cycle that was about right, then did some combination of copy pasting, madly blocking in whites, and sketching outlines. I need to fix all the jagys, and smooth out the lines and yadah yadah, but before I do that I want to make sure its right, and now, its close, but not. My biggest problem with it is the first and fourth frames basically. I feel like the 'knee' doesn't really extend far enough, but if I try to move it forward to much it looks even worse, and if I raise it it looses any sense that this sprite could do damage. The problem may be that I have placed the 'knee' in the wrong place, as the proportions on this sprite have very little in common with, well, anything. Unfortunately (for my animating, at least) I actually really like the broken proportions

Anyhow, any advice would be awesome, this is somewhere around the 5th version of the template for this game (the 4th, I actually finished for both genders and all three races before realizing it was nearly impossible dress, this one is basically made to be super easy to work with, as the player is going to making the actual character.)

Btw, I know the chest and arm are wrong, Im going to make the arm tilt downwards slightly on the last and 3rd frame, and the chest kinda jumps everywhere, Im mostly just worried about the legs right now, as they are closest to being right.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2010, 05:34:18 am by zez »

Offline zez

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #1 on: March 28, 2010, 08:49:29 pm
*bumb*
Alright, I think I fixed it. I just moved the 'knee' up slightly, shortened the leg, and cleaned it up a little bit (I still need to work on her butt a little bit,) and it looks a lot better, Something still seems off, but I cant put my finger on it, and I may have just been staring at it to long. Thoughts?

Offline 1up

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #2 on: March 28, 2010, 09:08:36 pm

i would uh

follow this guide (found it in another thread pretty close to yours wowee)
it's not really something to follow 100%, because given what your run looks like, you'd want to take a bit of a different path with the arms and possibly the head

but yeah
look at that

Offline zez

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #3 on: March 28, 2010, 09:55:49 pm
I actually did use that guide for reference, but found the tweening to be a bit excessive (If you look at a runcycle from a capcom fighter, you notice that something at about twice that size gets away with half the frames, and ends up with more energy for it,) and my stick figure actually follows a fairly similar movement path, the key difference being that in the case of both of my extremes, the feet are back further, this was intended to give off the impression she was pushing forward more from the ground, but its possible I lost the effect. I could try to move the knee forward slightly in frames 2 and 5 to make more of a 4 shape I suppose, but I felt like frames 1 and 3 covered that motion fairly well, and I really dont want to overextend the front (her front, not ours) foot to much, as I feel like that will weaken the backwards push...

*EDIT* this is pretty close to the motion I was going for with the legs, if that helps *EDIT*

*EDIT2* Do you think I should extend her spine forwards farther? Im worried it will get rid of the frolicy skipping feel, and Id have to tweak my code to support wider sprite sheets, but it would probably better convey the momentum *EDIT2*
« Last Edit: March 28, 2010, 10:31:03 pm by zez »

Offline Gil

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #4 on: March 28, 2010, 10:40:46 pm
There is no way you can compare the quality of a Capcom run to that cheat sheet posted above.

Capcom run cycles are based on animé runcycles, which are probably the poorest of poor runcycles. They can be studied to see how a cycle can be deconstructed into just keyframes, but the whole genre of animé tends to ignore everything but basic movement. Japanese game animation is a derivative of a derivative of a derivative. Try going for the original work for studying.

Animé's poor animation quality aside, your shapes seem to distort a lot. The legs seem to get thicker and thinner erratically in every frame. The problem might be that you work with lines. Try to work with shapes instead. Drop the black outline and animate just a silhouette. If the animation is not understandable in silhouette, you don't need lines, you just need to animate it better.

Offline MadHatter

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #5 on: March 28, 2010, 11:43:32 pm
duh

idk what kind of run your trying to do


that might help

i hope

yerp i stole that from a post you made a while back gil

Offline zez

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #6 on: March 28, 2010, 11:53:05 pm
Word, that helped immensely Gil.


A huge part of the problem Im having animating this, is that I wasnt responsible for the original piece (my girlfriend made the line work) and as of such am having a hell of a time guessing at where the joints on it should go. I actually started out with a stick figure, and then attempted to make the original image conform to its motion as much as possible, but that didnt really work so well, as I quickly realized my proportions weren't the same, then tried to go back and fudge them by tweaking the lines, and umm... yeah, that was probably the wrong idea. The first frame is still bugging me, but Im not 100% on what to do about it.

Im trying for some sort of middle ground between the run and skip in that pic, approximately. Im totally saving that for future reference. (Also, totally dreading doing the forward and backward facing run animation... Walk's are pretty easy, but this is going to be interesting.)

Offline 1up

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #7 on: March 29, 2010, 12:12:07 am
those arms make absolutely no sense
just sayin

Offline MadHatter

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #8 on: March 29, 2010, 12:13:08 am
Yeah, it would be better if you made the arms move back and forth like in all the other generic run cycles.

Offline Mike

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Re: WIP runcycle for RPG/social game

Reply #9 on: March 29, 2010, 12:20:31 am


The longer I look at this the less I can see the actual feet rotating the way they do in a non anime run.  It just seems to be flickering back and forth.  Actually it looks pretty awful in silhouette form.  However it's kinda like a run and isn't really seen for long periods at a time anyway so I guess for a fighter this animation works however a big sprite like this in a platformer wouldn't work so well because of the large spaces between frames.  There's only one frame where her arm crosses over noticeably and it's isn't really enough to show circular movement.


She looks like she is punching herself in the butt lol
Here this is just for kicks.






I don't know what you are trying to go for with your run cycle  ???
« Last Edit: March 29, 2010, 01:02:23 am by Mike »